26-11-2006, Sean Bell and his two buddies were mowed down by a barrage of bullets in Queens. Sean Bell died at the hands of the NYPD (self-acclaimed finest) just hours before he was to be wed to the mother of his children. With the scenario of a combat zone in a country in the midst of civil strife, about 50 bullets projected into the car Sean Bell was in. Unlike a combat zone, and more like a masarcre in Sudan or Colombia, the bullets flew from only one direction, and that was the direction of authorities or mafioso paramilitaries. Yet like one of these disfunctional regions, this incident was not an anomaly, because other NY residents have also been blown away by a uni-directional stream of lethal metal-projectiles. Also like many of these unfortunate civil cesspools, the details of the incident meander at the upper-echelons of authority, where information is repackaged in order to diminish recriminating adverse impact. In line with other places where such outrageous abuses take place, enforcement authorities are actors in a social setting charachterized by intolerence, discrimination and ignorance. To many who have had contact with members of the NYPD, it is an explict fact that a great number of them harbour and express crude rascist and chauvinistic views, despite living and working in the richist multi-cultural environments of the World. Abusive language and deragotory remarks is an NYPD standard. To many of us who have had supposed law-enforcement dealings with the NYPD, they express a marked propensity to abuse power. The threat and exercise of physical abuse by many cops is an all too-common modus operandi. Perhaps these trapping are perfected in minority neighorhoods.

While almost no one can rob them of the outstanding praise many of their members earned for their heroism during 9/11, the institution as a whole has been steadily spiriling down and out-of-control, reminiscent of a “Serpico-Bladerunner” movie. Unfortunatly this tragic situation cannot be remedied because controling and greedy politicians cannot tarnish the very icon they have opportunistically elevated and manipulated. While law-enforcement was supposed to evolve in the U.S. as a tool of social-mitigation, in NY, the police is increasingly becoming a vehicle for focused social manipulation unleashed by a corporate-foci. This accusation of selective abuse and manipulation can be overwhelmingly detailed by events that unfolded during the RNC, where dissention was quarantied to back of the “Garden”, while those of us who refused to see our rights and speech dimmed where quashed by the NYPD, who were pumped by an 80 million dollar infusion. The NYPD used their media-machine to vilify important members of NY’s non-violent activist community and thus prepare the grounds for their orchestrated and deliberate abuses. Fabrication and perjury by the NYPD were systemitized during the RNC on a mass-scale. Though in normal criminal procedings, fabrication and the extensión of charges is normal in order to insure a procedure and outcome. Many of those take-in during the RNC expressed an tacit understanding of what many minorities go through in prison system overwhelmingly populated by Afro and Hispanic dissent, while benifiting from the selectiveness of the system. During the Puerto Rican day parade, a large group of young hispanics where arbitrarily in-mass arrested by the NYPD during their own parade, yet no civil-liberties champion intervened in their defense or the defense of civil liberties, thus evidencing an apartheid within a value system where the NYPD is an actor. One can pose the question whether if a disfunctional institution such as the NYPD been halted from exercising its rascist, intolerant, unlegal and unprofessional practices, would this have curtailed its abusive role during the RNC and permitted the anti-war movement from getting its message out, and helped save so many countless lives, while exposing the truth.

While the death of Sean Bell once again demonstrates the abusive and disfuncional nature of the NYPD, it also exposes a divide in which we live in. This is the true praxis of daily-living in NYC or the US, to say the least. Yet, at the core of this divide is the NYPD and the justice system. In a system where opportunities and castigation is stacked against “minorities”. What is most disturbing is that a tarnished and awry institution like the NYPD is permited such dominant role in interpreting free-speech. Much more dangerous and undemocratic than allowing the NYPD to review the exercise of free speech, is to allow them to interpret how it is exercised. The NYPD has continuously demonstrated a marked difference in their tolerance and interpretation of the exercise of free speech. Political speech suffers an acute interpretation, while that with comercial orientation recieves scant attention, when in a truely democratic society, political and esocteric speech would be ideally elevated to sanctity. Would there have been a revolution and a Bill of Rights if pamphleteers and town-hall assemblers had been required to apply for a permit to the English authorities. No doubt that spontinaity and collective effectiveness would definitly been adveresly affected. It clear that permitting police authorities to be conduits for the exercise of free speech is a sure way to insure social stasis. It is also a sure way to insure that discrimination and abuse to indure in a society.

The NYPD is not only permeated by unjust values, but also often commendered by priviledged and discriminating groups. However the NYPD can only be stripped of its abusive trappings and practices by acclaiming the universality of rights. The barrage of bullets that mowed Sean Bell down is an accent of what minority neighorhoods indure at the hands of the “finest”. It is miracle that nobody else was killed by such an execution of power. The reaction by the Mayor and the power-elite would have been different if this shoot-up had happened on the west or east side of central park, outside of a swanky bar, and a white yuppie brutrally eliminated. This difference in attitudes is why the NYPD excels at brutality amongst supposed democratic and advanced societies.